People ex rel. Anonymous Petitioners v. Louise Wise Services
| Decision Date | 15 June 1964 |
| Citation | 21 A.D.2d 327,250 N.Y.S.2d 507 |
| Parties | PEOPLE ex rel. ANONYMOUS PETITIONERS, Petitioners-Respondents, v. LOUISE WISE SERVICES, a/k/a Wise Adoption Service, Respondent-Appellant, for a writ of habeas corpus to determine custody of Anonymous, a Male Child. |
| Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Shad Polier, New York City, for appellant.
Julius Roth, New York City, of counsel (Jules K. Lindenberg, New York City, attorney), for petitioners-respondents.
Before BOTEIN, P. J., and BREITEL, VALENTE, McNALLY and STALEY, JJ.
Respondent operates an eminent and responsible charitable child adoption service. It appeals from a judgment in a habeas corpus proceeding, described as a final order (CPLR Rule 411, § 7010[a]), awarding custody of a seven-month old infant to its natural parents. The judgment was entered June 2, 1964. Its effect was stayed by this Court pending an expedited appeal and determination.
The parents, now aged 17, were married after the birth of the child, and, when it was five months old, surrendered it to the agency for adoption. A little less than a month later they sought return of the child. One day after the demand for the return, the child was placed by the agency with adoptive parents.
The judgment should be affirmed.
On the trial the agency established the pattern of vacillation of the young parents with respect to surrendering the child for adoption, the trial period of foster care, the prevarications by the mother as to various relevant circumstances, the careful screening and selection by the agency of the adoptive parents, and the hazard to adoption agencies and to adoptive parents, if, after surrender, but before adoption, children may be retransferred to their natural parents.
There is no doubt the natural parents gave the agency a trying time, as it is also true that these young parents, almost children themselves, were undergoing a trying period, a period which will not end until they have become older, stabilized their own relationship, and completed their higher education. The young parents have some means of their own, the active assistance of the mother of one, some financial assistance from the grandparents of the other, and the father is the beneficiary of scholarships and school employment. The record, however, makes manifest that the adoptive parents would supply a healthy, stable, and perhaps, superior, environment for the child. But none of these relevant factors, alone, or in combination, should control the result, in the absence of unfitness in the natural parents, or such conduct by the natural parents, or the lapse of such time after placement of the child with adoptive parents, as would make it improper and hazardous to the child to retransfer the custody of the child.
The applicable principles were elaborated and the controlling authorities cited most recently in People ex rel. Anonymous v. New York Foundling Hosp., 17 A.D.2d 122, 232 N.Y.S.2d 479, aff'd 12 N.Y.2d 863, 237 N.Y.S.2d 339, 187 N.E.2d 791. The agency's position fails to accord the primacy of right and understanding to be accorded natural parents in these difficult situations. The superiority or the sentiments of the adoptive parents, the convenience of the adoption service, and even the possible ramifying effects on adoptions generally are subordinate factors. On the appeal, as compared with the agency's position on the trial, this subordination was recognized.
There had been a pattern of vacillation and prevarications by the surrendering parents. This was recognizable and must have been recognized by the agency. The child was finally placed with the agency for adoption on ...
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